Hi Maurice, First, a genuine compliment on your maximally correct observation <<Jay has headed for the exits, scurrying flat out while acting nonchalant ... just climb on top of the water and run. There are many ways to 'duck' for cover>>. Bravo, on the nature and style of my recent movements, and the psychological state underpinning these moves.
I will place my situation in a more clarified context. The fact that I am a global citizen domiciled in Hong Kong is totally irrelevant to my “currency home base”. My currency home base is the US, and USD is what I price my services at, collect my revenues in, and keep my NAV score with. For me to venture away from USD cash for other cash is a big decision, requiring deliberation, caution, and will to stay the course once taken. The decision requires as much internal debate and external justification as if I had to make an investment in General Electric or less wisely, Vertical Net.
Treating Euro and Swiss Franc as investments, I then have just placed the most rapid, deliberate, potentially dangerous, and concentrated bets, easily more substantial and consequential than my one time often mentioned speculation on the Softbank’s promise, or in fact, any other investment bar real estates.
In addition to a desire to protect what I already have, I am critically, no, frantically concerned about what I am about to get this coming January. My business is expecting to receive from a client a one-time wallop of USD revenue for final settlement of a 5-year contract, and the sum is equivalent to two years worth of average total gross business revenue for my entire business. The sum is entirely distributable to my main partner and myself, friction and encumbrances free. The sum, when distributed, would be equivalent to approximately 3-4 years of gross distributed income and 6-8 years of active savings on present value basis. A 20% devaluation of the USD within the next 5 months would translate to about 1.5 years of active savings in lost global purchasing value; 40 % devaluation :0(
The triggering event for this sudden gift of a problem occurred in late July, and so, unexpectedly, and totally unaccounted for in my conservative plans (business is not, until the money is in my hot little grasping hands), I have a sudden possible disaster I cannot, as Grace would put it, whine about. Once again I am in a fortunate but desperately dire situation. Re-using an old analogy, the music quickens, volume starts to hurt, candles flickering, and ceiling of the treasure-filled tomb is beginning to descend, grinding against the walls. The gate to the tomb is squeezing shut my exit to nirvana.
I am investigating three possible exits and the option of doing nothing, involving a leveraged hedging contract on the Euro, the straight borrowing of USD and conversion to a mix of currencies, the offering of a small discount to the client for early payment, and the sitting on my hands.
I believe Grace’s comment requires some additional clarifications, amendments, and possibly modifications …
Message 16226051
<<Real wealth isn't money or gold sitting in a bank vault ... real value comes from what you build with your money>>
… or maybe, more correctly, real wealth is idle money and gold sitting in a bank vault, and real value comes from what you do with the idle real wealth. This revised explanation may seem a small variation, but important, as you will see later.
<< ... Juniper's revenue growth and you'll see that they went from zero to almost 700,000 million a year in revenue in nine quarters>>
… but transfused in large part with previously real and Greenspan’s fiat imaginary wealth, in the form of venture capital and build-out debt, and zoomvroom, gone in 60 months, just as quickly.
<<… Show me a time in history where that kind of revenue growth was possible>>
The gossamer-like tech companies are quickly disgorging just about all of their alleged shimmering profit supposedly accumulated over the past five solid years. Give them a little more time, and all will be revealed, as ugly entrails pour forth on to the pavement from opened bellies facing the light of the warm sun.
At the frenzied peak, single tulips were rumored to be valued at levels for working farms and perfectly grand mansions, and thus, summing across all tulips and pro-forma descendent of tulips, applying any reasonably unsuitable and imaginatively low discount rate, would impute a economic value of the entire plausible tulip market on par with whole economies on the cusp of exploring new horizons.
And do not even get me started on the admittedly more useful but equally absurd and actual historic transacted values of railroads, canals, and General Electric manufactured diamonds.
<< ... Americans would rather go broke following a dream then get rich sitting on their money in the bank because wealth only has value when you do something with it>>
I would imagine the ever lovable Average American J6P, especially the politically incorrect faction of the branch of Boobus Americanus with who I identify with, a term stolen from www.dailyreckoning.com, would much prefer to adopt my fantastic vision of wealth … idly meandering amongst coconut palms, fringing a blue lagoon, dotted with thatch-roofed huts cooled by antique electric fans, summer all year round, connected by broadband and satellite com, and simply complemented with oodles and boodles of Caterina, Jade, Veronique, Ursula, Jasmine, Etsuko, Suzie, India, all frolicking in an ambient temperature and gently surfing water, swaying to the undulating beat of "do that to me again and again", with Gretchen and Gloria back at the open-air kitchen preparing sandwiches and mixed drinks, and Alexus carefully filtering home-made beer through an ice filter held up by Kiki, standing next to Kimiko, searing some Kobe beef on the grill.
Did I leave anything or anyone out by inattention to detail?
What do you think? Oops, that’s right, I forgot, you like the enterprise of busily treading QCOM New Economy scripts.
Grace believes real wealth is busy money, wildly flopping in the equity sea, not for a moment considering the possibility that true wealth is instead idle comfortable self-indulgent lazy unkempt piggish heft, soaking in a protected primordial lagoon, surrounded by beauty and adored by youth, rapping with buddies of equivalent disposition and complementary temperament.
As such, any one aiming for true wealth must act to panic, panic first, run fastest, jumping over others, before the already licking flame engulfs all within the Temple of Greenspan.
<< ... Not only that, you can create more wealth at a far higher rate even when you consider that there will from time to time be the kind of crisis of confidence and it's attendant collapse of prices we are seeing now.>>
… Now, here, Grace is talking and brightly lighting up the den, not about what has occurred but what is about to seize the state of perceived reality.
Now, Maurice, bravo on your perception that I am in a panic, and this item did not help to calm me down …
Message 16224512
Chugs, Jay |
